Page 16 of My Brother's Bad Best Friend

She gives me a sympathetic smile. “Yeah, he doesn’t answer that much anymore.”

I smile back, feeling stupid. I don’t know when I reverted back into such a pathetic little kid. Probably around the time my thigh shattered into a million pieces and I had to learn to walk without a cane, back when I had to learn to live with pain.

“Thanks anyway,” I say, and head over to a corner table. I sit down with a huff and pull out my phone, intending to stare at the screen until something in my life starts to make sense. I don’t know why I keep looking at all my old friends’ lives like it really matters anymore, like I even know them. After Nathan and the accident, it was like I was somehow responsible for what happened to him. Nobody talked to me, asked me how I was doing, how I was handling everything. I was a social pariah, an embarrassment, and nobody wanted anything to do with me.

Two years have passed and I’m still nothing to them. Sometimes, when I’m at my absolute worst, I wish I was the one driving that car, that I was the drunk one without a seatbelt.

Sometimes I wish it was my skull that smashed through the front windshield and broke apart on the pavement, fragments glittering in the headlights like steel dust.

“Heard you leave early this morning.” Jonas’s voice pulls me from my dark thoughts. I realize I’ve been staring at the same Instagram post for almost a minute now. I put my phone on the table, face-down.

“Went for a walk,” I say, which is only half a lie. I did go for a walk, but that’s not why I left so early.

“Yeah? Where’d you walk to?”

I hesitate a second. “Starbucks,” I say deciding to keep it simple.

“Cool,” he grunts a little, although I can tell he doesn’t think it’s cool at all. I don’t either, and I want to explain to him why I walked for an hour out and back just to stop in a crappy chain coffee shop, but I don’t. I can’t talk about my mom’s pregnancy, not yet at least.

“Heard you were looking for Ezra,” Jonas says. “I have no clue where he is, and I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”

“What’s that mean?”

He shrugs a little, picking at the fingernails on his right hand. “He’s been coming and going a lot lately. Mostly just going.”

I frown a little bit, fingers splayed out on the table, itching to grab my phone. “Last night, did he seem a little…”

“High as fuck?” Jonas supplies. “Yeah, he did.”

I bite my bottom lip. I knew something was weird with him but I couldn’t figure it out. I guess I haven’t been around people very much lately and I forgot what they’re like when they’re a little fucked up.

Jonas sighs. “Look, don’t let it get to you. Ezra has his shit together.” He hesitates a second. “Or at least I’ll make sure he does.”

“I know you will.”

“Been taking care of his idiot ass for five years now. I can keep doing it.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

“Your brother’s not exactly the most… responsible type.” Jonas laughs, a little bitterly. “Fuck, and neither am I, but one of us has to have their shit together or else all this would never happen.” He gestures around himself.

“That had to be you?”

“Pretty much. We were making good money, you know, dealing back when this shit was illegal. He wanted to buy jet skis and shit like that, but I made him save it. Kept telling him, something better will come along and we have to be ready.”

“This is the something better?”

“That’s right.” He grins at me. “This is the dream. This is Shangri-La.”

“This is La Mesa,” I correct him.

He laughs, crossing his arms. I glance at the tattoos, the muscles, and I wonder how Jonas the drug dealer turned into Jonas the responsible adult. I suspect he’s not all the way there, not yet at least, and for some crazy reason I want to find out just how responsible he’s become.

He laughs softly, reaching up to put his hands behind his head, flexing a little bit in the process. I feel a sharp twinge at the way he looks into my eyes.

“All right, little rose. I need to be careful around you.”

I wince at the stupid nickname. “Do you have to keep calling me that?”

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